Who are Eta?
For more than three decades the armed organisation Eta has waged a bloody campaign for independence for the seven regions in northern Spain and south-west France that Basque separatists claim as their own.
Euskadi
Ta Azkatasuna, Eta, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, first
emerged in the 1960s as a student resistance movement bitterly opposed to
General Franco's repressive military dictatorship. Under Franco the Basque
language was banned, their distinctive culture suppressed, and intellectuals
imprisoned and tortured for their political and cultural beliefs. The Basque
country saw some of the fiercest resistance to Franco. His death in 1975
changed all that, and the transition to democracy brought the region of two
million people home rule. But despite the fact that Spain's Basque country
today enjoys more autonomy than any other - it has its own parliament, police
force, controls education and collects its own taxes - Eta and its hardline
supporters remain determined to fight for full independence. That fight has
led to more than 800 deaths over the last 30 years, many of them members of
the Guardia Civil, Spain's national police force, and both local and national
politicians who are opposed to Eta's separatist demands. Nonetheless, their
power was thought to have faded significantly in recent years; although debate
has raged as to whether the group was a spent force or simply lying in wait.
Waning support
Certainly the days, in the late 1970s, when the group was able to kill 100 people per year on average - just as Spain was awakening from a long dictatorship and moving towards democracy - appeared to be over. In 2003, for example, three people were killed in Eta violence. The Eta of today has some logistical networks in France and a pool of a few hundred youths scattered across the borders of the Basque Country, in France and Spain, willing to engage in deadly missions. French and Spanish police have sought to reduce Eta's capability and the Spanish government and judiciary have banned the political wing of the movement, which seeks an independent state for the Basques. The logic for banning the political wing, which has operated for the last decade under different names - Herri Batasuna, Euskal Herritarrok, Batasuna - is that both wings are inextricably linked. Banning the political branch, it was hoped, would reduce the flow of funds and support to Eta units. No-one knows just how big the covert organisation is but the Spanish authorities estimate those active in Eta, fully paid up members who are trained to kill and who work in cells of around four people, could number as few as 30. There is increasingly less backing for Eta and its extremist followers. This is not only because of the gains made in recent years by moderate Basque nationalists, but also because there is a growing feeling that ETA is desperately out of touch with public opinion.
Changing times
Eta's
July 1997 kidnapping of a 29-year-old local councillor for the ruling Popular
Party in the Basque region, Miguel Angel Blanco, was a turning point in public
opinion. The group demanded that, as a prerequisite for his release, its some
460 prisoners who were held in jails all over Spain be returned to the Basque
region. The demand was not met. Blanco was found shot twice in the head, he
died in hospital twelve hours later. Horrified by the young councillor's
death, more than six million people across Spain took to the streets over four
days to demand an end to Eta's bloody violence. The massive public
mobilisation was likened to the marches for democracy that took place towards
the end of Franco's regime, and in an unprecedented move some of Eta's own
supporters publicly condemned the killing. The following year, Eta decided to
call an indefinite ceasefire. But that was officially ended in December 1999
after the government refused to discuss Eta's demands for Basque independence.
The Spanish government had always maintained it would never consider entering
talks with the armed group unless it renounced violence. The current ruling
party is campaigning for re-election in part on its tough line against Eta and
its defence of Spain's constitution in the face of demands for greater
autonomy from the Basque country and Catalonia.